Andrew H. Foote

“ The form of my government cannot be suddenly changed without causing such a revolution as would deprive me of my throne, and precipitate the kingdom into anarchy.... I am very desirous to acquire the friendship of England. I and my army are ready, at all times, to fight the queen’s enemies, and do any thing the English government may ask of me, except to give up the slave-trade. No other trade is known to my people. ”

“ No one could stand on Cape Mesurado, and see the intermingled churches and houses; the broad expanses of interior waters, bordered by residences, and see a people elevated far, very far, to say the least, above those of their color in other parts of the world, without the consciousness that a great work was begun. To meet everywhere the dark-browed men of Africa, solely the governors of it all, indicated a great fact in the history of the negro race. ”

“ The trade with the west coast was becoming the object of keen competition. England had for years had her full share, and was grasping for more; France was straining every nerve, by purchase and otherwise, as of old, to establish herself commercially there; while the United States were sending their adventurous traders to pick up what the change in Africa would develop. Something like an earnest cordial determination was evinced to abolish the slave-trade, and substitute for it the pursuits of true and beneficial commerce. ”

“ In fact, if all that negroes of all generations have ever done, were to be obliterated from recollection forever, the world would lose no great truth, no profitable art, no exemplary form of life. The loss of all that is African would offer no memorable deduction from any thing but the earth’s black catalogue of crimes. Africa is guilty of the slavery under which she suffered ”

“ A movement for the elevation of the colony into an independent state, has been made by the people at Cape Palmas, and a commission has visited this country to make arrangements for the purpose. That there be full political independence granted to this people, is requisite, as an element of the great achievement now going on. This contemplates something far higher than creating merely a refuge for black men, or sticking on a patch of colored America on the coast of Africa like an ill-assorted graft, for which the old stock is none the better. ”

“ Our government is disposed to show itself there, for there are its people, and there are their interests. The shores of savage lands are our confines with savages. Just as forts are required on the frontiers of the Camanches or Utahs, so are they at Ambriz or Sumatra. Cruisers are the nation’s fortresses abroad, employed for the benefit of her citizens, and the security of their commerce. It would be discreditable, as well as unsafe, to trust to a foreign power to keep down piracy in the Gulf of Guinea, or in the West Indies and in the China seas. ”

“ It will continue to be our pride and our boast, the worthy representative upon the ocean, of the genius, the skill, and the enterprise of our people—of the boundless resources of our growing country—of the power, and grandeur, and glory, as well as the justice and humanity of our free institutions. ”

“ It is a conquest to get him to believe that there is any virtue in man. They have never had a Socrates, to talk wisdom to them; nor a Cyrus, who was not a slave-merchant; nor a Pythagoras, to teach that kindness was a virtue. Hence the difficulty which the Christian missionary has had with them, has been to satisfy their minds as to the miraculous phenomenon of there being a good man. It has been always found that there was many a consultation among their sages as to the peculiar trade or purpose the missionary might have in view, in coming as he came ”

“ Our country thus became present, as it were, in power to repress, and if need be, by punishment to avenge outrages on our citizens or their property. It checked, by important captures, the desecration of the American flag, and has had an essential agency towards removing the guilt of the slave-trade from the world. Had we no squadron on the African coast, American vessels would with impunity pursue the iniquitous traffic; our commerce would be exposed, and our citizens subject to outrage. ”

“ Liberia, I think, is now safe, and may be left after a while to stand alone. Would it not be advisable, then, for the Colonization Society to turn its attention to some other portion of the coast, and extend the area of Christian and philanthropic efforts to bettering the condition of the colored people of our country, by sowing on other parts of the coast some of the good seed which has produced so bountifully on the free soil of Liberia.... In no part of the world have I met with a more orderly, sober, religious and moral community than is to be found at Monrovia. ”

“ When Christian benevolence looked abroad upon the face of the world to examine its condition and its wants, Africa was seen, dark, gloomy, and vast and hopeless, with Egyptian darkness upon it,—“darkness that might be felt,”—while Europe guarded and fought for it as a human cattle-fold, to be plundered with an extent and atrocity of rapine such as the world elsewhere had never beheld. ”

“ Individuals from all sections of our own country, bearing on them the imperial character of their nation, had transmitted it by the dark-skinned race, to vivify with liberty and self-government, the great slave-land of the world. ”

“ What we have to do in times of peace, is to maintain our naval force in the highest state of efficiency of which it is capable, and ready to enter upon action at a moment’s warning. With the lessons of the British war before us, it cannot be possible that the recent experiments of Lieutenant Dahlgren at Washington, and the discoveries which have resulted from them, will fail to prove of high practical service. But with all our appliances or discoveries in this regard, we cannot conceal from ourselves the fact, that we are behind other nations in all that concerns the structure of our ships. ”

“ The whole coast is intersected by innumerable rivers, with branches pouring into them from every quarter, and communicating with each other by narrow, circuitous and very numerous creeks, bordered on each side with impenetrable thickets of mangroves. In these creeks, almost concealed by the trees, the vessels lie, and often elude the strictest search. But when they have taken on board their living cargo, and are getting out to sea, the British are very apt to seize them, except, alas! when they are protected by the banner of the United States. ”

“ The African has never reached in fact, until the settlement of Liberia, a higher rank than a king of Dahomey, or the inventor of the last fashionable grisgris to prevent the devil from stealing sugar-plums. No philosopher among them has caught sight of the mysteries of nature; no poet has illustrated heaven, or earth, or the life of man; no statesman has done any thing to lighten or brighten the links of human policy. ”

“ Every person interested in upholding the rights of humanity, or concerned in the progress of Africa, will sympathize with the capture and deliverance of a wretched cargo of African slaves from the grasp of a slaver, irrespective of his nationality. But it is contrary to national honor and national interests, that the right of capture should be entrusted to the hands of any foreign authority. ”

“ A slaver was thus to be taken, because she was a slaver; just as it is better to shoot the wolf before he has killed the sheep than afterwards. If a vessel, therefore, was found on the African coast with slave-irons, water in sufficient quantity for a slave-cargo, with a slave-deck laid for packing slaves—somewhat as the carcases of sheep and pigs in a railway train, with the exception of the fresh air—she was seized and condemned before committing the overt act. ”

“ CHAPTER VIII. DAHOMEY—SLAVISH SUBJECTION OF THE PEOPLE—DEPENDENCE OF THE KING ON THE SLAVE-TRADE—EXHIBITION OF HUMAN SKULLS—ANNUAL HUMAN SACRIFICES—LAGOS—THE CHANGES OF THREE CENTURIES.
Dalziel, in slave-trading times, shocked the world with details in reference to Dahomey. Duncan and Forbes have again presented the picture in the same hues of darkness and of blood. Ghezo is a good king as things go, and rather particularly good for an African, for whom the world has done nothing, and who, therefore, cannot be expected to do much for the world. He has a threatening example before him. ”

“ If a man throttles another, or suffocates him for want of air, or stows eight hundred people in a ship’s hold, where he knows that one or two hundred in the “middle passage” will necessarily die, every such death is a murder, and each man aboard of such vessel who has any agency in procuring or forwarding this cargo, is a murderer. It has therefore been contrary to justice, that the perpetrators of such crimes should have been dismissed with impunity when captured. Such considerations ought to weigh with men in the future. ”

“ Notwithstanding the heterogeneous population of Liberia, a commendable degree of order, quiet and comparative prosperity prevails. With such men as President Roberts, Chief-Justice Benedict, Major-General Lewis, Vice-President Williams, and many other prominent persons in office and in the walks of civil life, the government and society present an aspect altogether more favorable than a visitor, judging them from the race when in contact with a white population, is prepared to find. The country is theirs—they are lords of the soil ”

“ Every treaty contained an absolute prohibition of the slave-trade.
Cape Palmas colony, then, may be considered as now extending from the confines of her elder sister at the river Jarraway, as far to the eastward as Cape Lahou. The inland boundary may be anywhere, as the future shall settle it. The cultivated or cleared land extends parallel to the coast, over distances varying from twenty-five to fifty miles. Here comes on the dark verdure of forest, undulating over the rising lands which lead to the mountains, or whatever they may be, which feed the rivers. ”

“ Captain Dunlop, in command of the cruisers, a good naval diplomatist, ready in the cause of justice and humanity to make precedents where none could be found, informed the Sherboro chiefs, that a treaty existed between them and his government for the suppression of the slave-trade; and suggested to them the virtue and the profit of seizing the goods brought from Sierra Leone. The chiefs had the smallest possible objections which honest men could have, to appropriate the slavers’ goods to themselves. ”

“ It is revenge, as much as desire to perpetuate the remembrance of victory, which makes them eager for the skulls and jaw-bones of their enemies, so that in a royal metropolis, walls, and floors, and thrones, and walking-sticks, are everywhere lowering with the hollow eyes of the dead. These sad, bare and whitened emblems of mortality and revenge present a curious and startling spectacle, cresting and festooning the red clay walls of Kumassi, the Ashantee capital. ”

“ The changes of the last three centuries have, to only a slight degree, influenced the African races. An inaccessible interior, and a coast bristling with slave-factories, and bloody with slaving cruelties, probably account for this. The slight progress made shows the obduracy of the degradation to be removed, and the difficulty of the first steps needed for its removal. Wherever the slave-trade or its effects penetrated, there of course peace vanished, and prosperity became impossible. ”

“ For much as colonization has accomplished, and effectual as Liberia is in suppressing the slave-traffic within her own jurisdiction, these means and these results have been established and secured by the presence and protection of the naval squadrons of Great Britain, France and the United States. And had no such assistance been rendered, the entire coast, where we now see legal trade and advancing civilization, would have been at this day, in spite of any efforts to colonize, or to establish legal commerce, the scene of unchecked, lawless slave-trade piracy. ”

“ The slavery imported and grafted on this country by foreign political supremacy, when the country was helpless, has been subjected to a trial never undergone by such an institution in any other part of the world. An enemy held dominion where slavery existed, and while the masters were called upon to fight for their own political independence, there was opportunity for the slave to revolt or escape if such had been his wish. ”

“ There has thus been presented a view of Africa and of its progress, as far as its condition and advancement have had any relation to our country and its flag. How far its growth in civilization has been dependent on the efforts of America has been illustrated; and how essentially the naval interference of the United States has contributed to this end, has been made evident. It cannot escape notice that this progress must in the future depend on the same means and the same efforts. Our own national interests, being those of a commercial people, require the presence of a squadron. ”

“ Refusing to the British government the right of search, our government has commanded us to prevent vessels and citizens of the United States from engaging in the slave-trade. These duties we must perform to the best of our ability, and we have no right to ask or receive the aid of a foreign power. ”